Size Matters ....

The first D&D game I ever ran was just myself and my cousin. I had received The Red Box for Xmas and I was eager to run. Needless to say, the game was insane and out of control. The main PC had a He-Man style breast plate with a removable double ax head that could be ridden like a surf board. Weird.

But, there were bigger problems than our unrestrained imaginations. It was only the two of us. I knew what was going on in the game and played all the NPCs. My cousin played his character. So, it came down to me trying to entertain him. Actually, I spent a lot of time not doing homework and rolling up NPCs that would never be used - but that's another story.

A few years later, I had graduated to AD&D. I ran a group of my high school friends and their friends and family. I've referred to this group before. At one point, I was DMing for at least eight regular players and another six to ten random drop ins and irregular no shows. One night, it was twelve players all at once. Ever play on a really slow WoW server? That's what combat felt like that night. Awful!

Before I left STL, I was in a group of about six that played in multiple games. This was a pretty tight group and we functioned rather smoothly. This seemed like a rather perfect size. Not too small and none too large.

My current Star Wars group is right at that magical number with five total people. Again, we function rather well and we've taken turns GMing. None too big or small. One can miss a session and the group can continue. We could probably add a player or two, but the attention we get out of the various GMs has been rather lavish.

I'm involved in a World of Darkness game and I warned the Storyteller early on that he was dicing with an unfriendly random encounter table. First, he is mixing the whole of the WoD together. For anyone that has ever tried to move their Vampire into a game of Werewolf or any permutation possible within the WoD, they will quickly discover that White Wolf has built several quality games, but, they have not built a consistent, cohesive universal system such as d20 or GURPS. So, strike one there.

Strike two comes from the fact that he has a group of seven including himself and has talked about adding extra players. He's right at the point of having too large of a group. Add in all the issues of running a game of Vampire/Werewolf/Mage/World of Weirdness - he's bitten off quite a chunk. To his credit, he is doing a pretty good job chewing what he doth bite. But, I have seen the beginnings of problems. I don't blame him, it's a lot to handle. He has a large group of creative players who all want attention. We're a bunch of brainy puppies, chasing each other's tails and tromping all over this poor Storyteller. I hope he yet proves that he is the exception to the rule.

So, to sum up, if your group is starting to drown in its own success, think about pruning it down. Two groups of five, in my opinion, will do better than one group of ten.